Numbness stole over her as Greg slid out of his chair. As though from a distance, she watched him drop down to one knee beside her, at the same time pulling a small box out of his coat.
“I will never accomplish anything worthwhile if you’re not by my side. I can’t imagine living without you. I want you to share my goals, be part of my successes. Part of my life. Jillian Elizabeth King, will you marry me?”
The hum of conversation in the restaurant grew quiet as the people at the surrounding tables paused to watch, indulgent smiles on every face. Greg opened the lid of the black velvet box. The diamond inside caught the light from the candle on the table and turned it into sparkles.
Share his goals? Be part of his successes?
A bitter thought slashed through the numbness. Why, yes. Of course. What else could she do? She had no more goals of her own.
No, that’s not right. I love Greg. I want to be his wife.
Tears blurred her vision. If she wasn’t entirely sure they were all tears of joy, well, at least most of them were.
She swallowed against a lump in her throat. Smiled. Drew breath.
“Yes.” A sob came out with the word, and she tried again. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
As Greg slipped the diamond onto her finger, the other diners and the waiters applauded.
Chapter 4
THE CLOUDS HELD ONTO THE promised snow during the ride home until the car crossed over MacDonald’s Bridge and turned south on Eastern Passage Road. Jill watched snowflakes speckle the windshield in random patterns. Every few seconds the wipers swept them into oblivion like a giant Etch-a-Sketch clearing the slate for the next masterpiece. Jazz played softly through the radio speakers, and her ear automatically pinpointed the keyboard. The musician wasn’t bad, but a little slow on the segue.
Greg’s words penetrated her thoughts. “What do you think about a Christmas wedding?”
She’d never been one of those girls who spent hours planning her dream wedding. Practicing took all her time, and when her fingers weren’t on the keys, she was studying the composers’ lives, learning their personalities and the events that influenced their music. Last summer she’d attended a college friend’s wedding, though, and it had been gorgeous, with tons of colorful flowers everywhere. She’d almost been able to picture herself up there at the altar, dressed in white and surrounded by pink blossoms. But a winter wedding would be beautiful, too.
“Our flowers could be red and white poinsettias.” She aimed a smile sideways at Greg. “We’d better reserve the church soon, though. It’s a busy place during the holidays, but if we pick our date now and get it on the schedule a year in advance, we should be safe.”
Greg was silent for a moment, and then he spoke sheepishly. “Actually, I meant this Christmas.”
She jerked her head toward him. “This Christmas? You mean, like, in a month?”
“Yeah. My brother and his family will be in for the holiday, so we could do it out at my parents’ home in the orchard. Just a quiet ceremony. You know my sister-in-law is a nurse, so we’ll have help caring for your mom, and Ruth would come, of course. I’ve already poked around and found out Reverend and Mrs. Hollister aren’t going anywhere this year, and they were thrilled at my invitation to have Christmas dinner at the orchard.” He glanced away from the road to catch her eye. “Unless you have your heart set on a big church wedding.”
“No. It’s not that. I just —” Jill grasped for words. He’d obviously put a lot of thought into this. But get married in a month?
Well, why not? It’s not like she and Greg were strangers. They’d known and loved each other for four years.
“I’ve waited a long time for you, Jill.” He reached across the console and picked up her hand, where it lay on her lap. His thumb brushed gently across the scar, on its way to touch the engagement ring on her third finger. “Your music always came first, and I understood that. But now it’s finally time for us to come first.”
Jill stared at their clasped hands. Is that how he felt, that he played second fiddle to her piano?
It’s true. My music has always been my top priority.
But not anymore.
An ache of longing, of loss, throbbed in her chest. She’d lost one love in her life. God had taken it from her. She wouldn’t lose Greg, too.
“A Christmas wedding sounds wonderful.” She smiled and intertwined her fingers with his. “Nana is going to be thrilled.”
“This Christmas?” Ruth grasped at the collar of her pink housecoat. “Impossible. It can’t be done.”
Greg laughed at her outraged expression and pulled Jill closer to his side. “What’s there to do? A marriage license only takes five days.”
The snow had started to fall in earnest, but hadn’t yet begun to accumulate on the roads when they pulled into the Cove at ten thirty. Jill had invited him inside so they could deliver the good news to her grandmother together. Ruth insisted that she hadn’t been sleeping, only reading in bed, but her fiery hair stood at spiky attention at the back of her skull, and her eyes had been half-lidded when she first entered the cozy living room.
Now, after hearing their news, they bulged like a bigeye tuna’s.
“What’s there to do?” The heated scorn in the look she turned on him could have popped corn kernels. “There are invitations to print, and decorations to arrange, and —” Her hands flapped in the air. “Oh, a million details to attend to.”
“Nana, we’re going to have a small family ceremony out at Greg’s father’s ranch. No need for invitations.” Jill stepped away from his side to put an arm around her grandmother and lead her to the couch. “The house will already be decorated for Christmas, and it’ll be gorgeous. Right, Greg?”
Greg watched in amusement as Ruth dropped onto the center cushion, her expression dazed. Jill perched beside her. A few strands of Jill’s silky dark hair danced around her head with minds of their own, charged with static from the wool hat she’d removed moments before. Her ivory skin glowed in the soft light from the table lamp. She was the most beautiful woman Greg had ever known. He could hardly believe she would be his wife in a month.
“You know what everyone will say, don’t you?” Ruth’s eyebrows, practically nonexistent without the dark penciled lines that gave them emphasis during the day, arched high on her forehead. “They’ll say you’re pregnant.”
Jill’s face flamed, but Greg only laughed. He had considered the possibility. A small but extremely vocal segment of the Cove’s population kept the gossip lines buzzing over something or other at all times. No doubt the juicy news of a rushed wedding would be the only topic of conversation for a long time.
“No one who knows us well will think that,” he assured the ladies. “And the others can speculate all they want. What do we care?”
Concern drew lines across Jill’s smooth forehead. “Greg, the gossip won’t hurt your campaign, will it?”
“Not at all. Besides, the election is six months away. They’ll see they were wrong long before then.” He pulled his gloves out of his pocket. “I need to get going. I have another breakfast meeting at seven in the morning to talk about the campaign. Why people keep wanting to meet at such an uncivilized hour is beyond me.” He pulled an elaborate grimace that made Jill smile and Ruth blast a horsey laugh.
The women rose together. Ruth crossed the room with outstretched arms and gathered him in a hug.
“Congratulations. I’m ecstatic, you know, even though you’ve just ruined my December.” She awarded him a playful slap on the shoulder. “You might not get a Christmas present this year, young man. I’ll be too busy planning a wedding to do anymore shopping.”
Greg returned her hug, his gaze fixed on Jill. She looked like a vision standing in the middle of the room, so graceful and achingly beautiful, bathed in beams of warm yellow light. “I’m getting the best Christmas present in the world. I don’t need anything else.”
“You’ve got that right.” Ruth released him and turned
a proud look toward Jill. “You are getting the best.”
A becoming blush stained Jill’s cheeks. She walked with Greg into the entry hall. At the front door he turned and opened his arms. She stepped into them, and for a moment they stood, silent, while he breathed deeply of the clean, fresh scent that was uniquely hers.
“Are you as happy as I am?” he whispered into her ear.
“I’m very happy.” His coat muffled her voice. “I know what Nana means, though. I’m just realizing how much there is to do between now and Christmas.”
“The beauty of a private ceremony is you can do as little or as much planning as you want.” He pulled back enough to place a tender kiss on her forehead. “It’ll be good to see you enthusiastic about something again. Especially when that something is the beginning of our life together.”
She leaned back, her eyes searching his. A tiny crease appeared to mar the skin between her eyebrows.
Greg traced the crease with his thumb. “What’s wrong? You’re not having second thoughts already, are you?”
The skin smoothed, and she shook her head. “Of course not. I love you, and I can’t wait to become Mrs. Gregory Bradford.”
Her arms rose to circle his neck and pull him forward. When their lips touched, her kiss chased away any doubt about her enthusiasm.
Snow swirled through the door on a blast of wind, and Jill pushed it shut behind Greg with a thud. She rubbed a shiver out of her arms as she returned to the front room. Nana was once again seated on the sofa. With a vein-lined hand she patted the cushion in an invitation to join her.
Jill dropped onto the cushion, kicked off her shoes, and grabbed a multicolored afghan lying across the back to snuggle beneath.
Nana turned sideways until she was looking at Jill head-on. “All right, tell me the truth. Are you pregnant?”
“Nana!” Heat rushed into Jill’s face. “I can’t believe you’d ask that. I’m definitely not pregnant. Greg and I haven’t …” She dropped her gaze. “You know.”
Nana nodded. “I didn’t think so, but I know how these things can happen unexpectedly. Then why the rush to get married?”
Jill avoided her grandmother’s piercing gaze by focusing her attention on the afghan across her lap. “There’s no reason to wait, really. I love Greg. Neither of us cares about having a big wedding. Greg’s brother and his family will already be here for Christmas, so they won’t have to make a separate trip.” She plucked at a loose stitch. “And to be honest, I think Greg is trying to push me back into the land of the living. You know, give me a reason to look ahead instead of behind.”
She risked an upward glance. Nana studied her through narrowed eyes.
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing. You haven’t been yourself since the accident.”
Jill could think of no reply for that colossal understatement.
Nana scooted closer, turned on the cushion so they were side by side, and pulled part of the afghan over her legs. She looped her arm through Jill’s.
“You’ve been through a terrible ordeal, dear. You’ve lost your first passion, your music. There’s no need to rush. You can take as much time to heal as you need.”
Though Nana’s words had been repeated many times before, at the mention of her music a familiar pain throbbed in Jill’s chest. Pain she was tired of suffering. Would it never go away? Would she always feel such heart-wrenching grief every time she walked past her piano?
“No.” She pulled Nana’s arm tighter against her side. “I’ve taken enough time. Greg is right. It’s time to move on, to move forward. I’ve even been thinking of —” She paused to draw a fortifying breath. “Of taking on a few students.”
There. She’d said it. The thought had been hovering in the back of her mind like a child cowering in the wings of the theater, afraid to step into the spotlight of center stage.
Nana drew upright, surprise making her eyes as round as the life preservers the Cove kept placed strategically around the docks. “Piano students? Why, Jill, that’s wonderful. You’ll be blessing others with your gift again, just in a different way than before.” She paused, and a look of concern shadowed her features. “But can you do it? Physically, I mean. I haven’t heard you play in almost a year. Is your hand healed enough?”
Jill withdrew her left hand from beneath the afghan and held it in front of her face. The diamond glittered on her third finger, but it only drew attention to the angry scar that sliced across the skin from her wrist to the knuckle of her forefinger, with a Y-shaped fork toward her thumb. She splayed her fingers. Once she’d been able to span from C to D. Now, after two surgeries and a year of physical therapy, she could barely cover a full octave. Could she play? Probably well enough for most things, like church hymns and family sing-alongs. But “well enough” wasn’t nearly enough for Jill.
Time to face facts. Her concert days were truly over. And without the drive to achieve perfection during a performance, the thought of playing anything brought a deeper pain than just the one in her hand.
“It’s healed enough to give lessons.” She hid it once again beneath the loosely crocheted wool.
Nana studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “All right then. We’ll plan a wedding in a month.” A sudden smile widened her mouth. “I have an idea. You can wear your mother’s wedding dress. You’re close to the size she was when she married your father. She would have loved seeing you married in that dress.”
Jill returned the smile. “She will see me married in her dress. That’s a terrific idea.” She peeled back the afghan and stood, covering a yawn with her hand. “It’s late. I’m going to bed.”
“Good night, dear. I think I’ll just jot down a few notes before I go to sleep.” Nana stood and draped the afghan across the back of the sofa. “There’s so much to do, we’re bound to forget something if we don’t take notes.”
Jill laughed. “Get some sleep, Nana. We have a whole month.”
When she left the room, Nana was rummaging in a drawer of her desk, mumbling about never being able to find a pen when she needed one. Jill climbed the wooden stairs that led to her apartment. Discomfort twinged in her injured hip with every upward step.
In the darkness of her kitchen, she paused for a moment. Should she make a cup of herbal tea to take to bed with her? No, the clock on the microwave read past eleven. Too late for tea. She crossed the living room, made a wide pass around the dark shape that used to occupy eight or ten hours of every day, and flipped the light on in her small bedroom. The bed dominated the available space, leaving barely enough room for a nightstand and chest of drawers along the far wall, opposite the closet.
Where would she and Greg live? Surely he wouldn’t want her to move into his apartment, which wasn’t much bigger than this one, only without the beautiful ocean view. But would he move in here and live upstairs from Nana? At the idea of moving out of her grandmother’s house, a surprising wave of homesickness washed over Jill. She’d lived with Nana since she was fourteen years old, when the stroke had robbed her of her mother. Eleven years. At first she’d lived in the spare bedroom downstairs, but then she’d taken over the upstairs apartment when she came home from college. She guessed that if Greg preferred to live somewhere else, Nana could rent this place again.
A small sigh escaped Jill’s lips. So many changes. At times the weight of them threatened to crush her like …
A weight across her body crushed her, pinned her down. She tried to push it off …
With a start, Jill shoved the memory away and jerked open the second drawer of her chest, which held her pajamas. Some changes were good. She and Greg would have a happy life together. The decision to offer piano lessons was also a good change. Giving lessons would help her move forward, help her do something with her time other than sit in front of the television set all day. Like Nana said, she’d be able to bless others with her gift. At least all those years of study wouldn’t go completely to waste.
She ignored the tightness in her ches
t as she readied herself for bed and slid beneath the heavy quilt. When she turned off the light, strains of music flowed through her head, as they had done since she was a girl. Waltzes, concertos, sonatas. But tonight she refused to let the music she’d worked so hard to learn lull her to sleep. That kind of music was forever denied to her. With his final breaths, Robert had whispered that God would not take her music away from her, but that was only the wish of a dying man. One God hadn’t seen fit to grant.
Why, God? Why did you let this happen to me?
A heavy silence met her unspoken question.
Fumbling blindly in the dark, Jill opened the drawer on her nightstand and felt inside for the bottle of sleeping pills. She hadn’t taken one in months, but the doctor had prescribed them for nights like this, when her thoughts refused to be tamed.
A weight pressed on her chest …
Jill sat straight up in bed, heart thundering in her throat. She struggled to draw breath into uncooperative lungs. The sound of her gasping attempts filled the dark bedroom, like someone choking on a sip of water that had gone down the wrong way.
I’m having a panic attack. Can’t breathe. I’ve got to relax.
She forced herself to focus on tactile details of her immediate surroundings — the soft mattress beneath her, the chill of the air in the room, the warmth of the quilt, the comforting scent of the salty Atlantic that permeated every room in the house. Before long her lungs relaxed and she was able to inhale deep, wonderful breaths of oxygen.
When her breathing returned to something that resembled normal, she slipped out of bed and stumbled through the dark apartment to the kitchen. A drink of water, that’s what she needed. Something to soothe her raw, burning throat.
Green numbers glowed from the clock on the microwave. Four twenty-three. She filled a glass with tap water and gulped it down, not even caring that it was lukewarm.
Was it normal to have a panic attack while sleeping? It had never happened before. What set it off?
She set her glass in the dish drainer and leaned against the counter. A dream. Yes, she remembered now. She’d had a dream, something about …
Lost Melody Page 3
